


Red Rover

by brightly_lit



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Badass, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 08:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6511585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_lit/pseuds/brightly_lit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of "Free to Be You and Me," Sam continues working at the bar.  A customer comes along with whom Sam feels something he's seldom felt in his whole lonely life: a real kinship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Rover

**Author's Note:**

> -I've been wanting to write a story about Bucky, and a story about Tim and Reggie/"Free to Be You and Me," for a while, and some great fanart finally gave me the inspiration to combine them--you can see it [here](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/402589.html).
> 
> -The Hungarian name of the game Red Rover translates as "Send, o king, a soldier," which seemed fitting.

“What’ll it be?” Sam asked the guy at the bar who’d been staring into space since he sat down. Usually they flagged him when they wanted to order, but by the time this guy dragged himself out of his reverie, it’d be closing time.

First, the guy flinched, then stared at Sam with this haunted, pleading horror that to anyone else would look like some kind of insanity, maybe--back away slowly, don’t make eye contact kind of insanity--but which to Sam made more sense than anything he’d seen in years. The guy looked askance, took in his surroundings, and seemed to remember himself--or at least, where he was. “Uh--Manhattan,” he said falteringly. “Make it a double. Or a triple. Or, just, whatever you’ve got.”

Sam nodded and took the guy’s lead in trying to act normal, like they fit in around here. Around anywhere. He’d been promoted to bartender after he proved himself adept at mixing drinks, not to mention they were down a bartender since Lindsey took off the day after Tim and Reggie took her hostage to try to make Sam drink demon blood and “hulk out” on the demons who killed their hunting buddy, Steve. 

Sam served the guy his Manhattan, and saw it when the guy reached for it and his jacket sleeve came up, just a little: the tell-tale scars of a life of violence. Sam had been looking at them on every hunter and family member around for as long as he could remember. The guy wore a glove on his other hand. That one must be a wreck. Their eyes met, and Sam gave him a slight attempt at a smile. The guy just took a long drink, then stared at the glass in his hand as if it took him back. Way back. Weird; he looked barely older than Sam.

“So ...,” Sam said, still going with faking normal. You never knew. There were times, in high school and college, when Sam had thought he perceived a sameness with someone, said one odd thing, and got pariahed as a result. “Been in town long?”

The guy shook his head.

“No? When’d you get in?” Sam continued conversationally.

The guy looked askance. “Uhmmm ... not sure,” he said at last, as baffled by that question as he’d been by being asked what he wanted to drink.

“You staying in town?” Sam said, with more purpose. “Because I just got here a few weeks ago myself, and, uh ... Hank’s Hideaway is cheap, and a decent place to stay. You know, clean.”

The guy nodded slowly, taking this in--again, like it made him remember. “Oh--okay. Thanks.”

“I’m Sam,” said Sam, holding out his hand.

“Bucky.” They shook. 

Sam grinned. “Bucky, huh? Never heard that one before.”

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes,” he said, as if reciting something. “I was a--a soldier,” he stuttered.

“Oh yeah? My dad was a Marine. Did you ... see battle?”

“Yes,” Bucky said, and Sam just nodded. That explained it. He wasn’t a hunter, or a freak like Sam. This was shellshock, plain and simple.

“Thank you for your service to our country,” Sam said respectfully. Even if Dad wouldn’t have skinned him for not showing proper respect to a serviceman, he’d have wanted to say it.

Yet Bucky looked up at him, bewildered. “So you--you know about that?” he demanded. “And you ... think I was doing good, too? Because I don’t think so. Steve doesn’t think so.”

“Steve?” Sam said, breath rising. Oh, Jesus, was Steve not dead after all? Or, more likely, possessed by a demon? Oh, God, had Tim and Reggie resurrected him as some kind of vengeance revenant?? “Where is he?” he demanded.

“I don’t know! Back in Washington, I guess. I saved him, pulled him out of the river. He was alive. I heard he’s trying to find me, but I just ... I’m trying to keep out of trouble. All the fighting, all the violence, it has to stop. But it follows me. It’s like it comes from me,” he said hauntedly.

“Yeah,” said Sam soberly. “I know what you mean.”

After a little more prying, Sam determined it was almost certainly a different Steve, and Bucky didn’t seem to know Tim or Reggie. He didn’t seem to know much of anything at all, even about his own past. Questions met with sincere but vague answers, usually fading into a mumbled, “I don’t remember.”

Sam respected his need for space. It all sounded so much like this Steve guy was to Bucky what Dean was to Sam. Exactly, down to practically being brothers, down to a big fight that led to an uneasy separation that left him adrift and alone when he was his most vulnerable. Whatever had happened, whatever this guy had seen, it was clear that what he needed most now was peace, safety, just time and space to remember who he was, what he was about, and find his way again. Sam couldn’t bear to kick him out after last call, suspecting--as had been the case for Sam all too many times in his life, including very recently--that he had no place else to go.

Sam was collecting glasses and wiping down tables when the door jingled. “We’re closed!” he called, annoyed ... then turned sharply, remembering the last time this happened, and sure enough, there were Tim and Reggie ... with ten of their closest hunter buddies. Sam closed his eyes and said what he knew was sure to be a fruitless prayer before opening them again and steeling himself.

Tim grinned. “Hey again, Sam. Told you we’d be back.”

“And I told you I’d be here,” Sam snapped, backing up until he could touch Bucky lightly on the shoulder. He turned his head toward him just long enough to murmur intently, “Get outta here. Out the back door. Go.” He gestured toward the back door with his chin and turned again to face the hunters, who were spreading out and slowly advancing toward him. No escape.

Sam took them in, one by one, looking for weak points he might be able to break through, like some twisted game of Red Rover. There were a couple of short, slight hunters on one side, one of them female, but she had a reputation for her facility with knives, which he saw flashing at her belt. He’d beaten Tim and Reggie before, but--Jesus, was that a gun?!

Sam eyed every exit wildly. Could he get out the back door before Tim got off a shot, and if he did, would he be bringing down the wrath of a dozen hunters on Bucky if Bucky hadn’t gotten far enough away yet? Bucky hadn’t even left, he realized as he backed up another step and felt the heat of a human body against his back--and what felt like a massive hunk of metal, which threw him, but he didn’t have time to think about that now. “Get out of here!” Sam hissed urgently.

A hunter grabbed for Sam’s arm, and Sam swung wildly, caught at the same moment by three other hunters behind and on his other side. He struggled with all his might, but every time he got a limb free, it was fast caught by multiple hunters, who weren’t holding back at all. Tim took out a lore book and held it in one hand, gun in the other, and started reading while Reggie put ingredients for some spell in a bowl. Sam didn’t recognize the spell, but he sure as hell recognized his own name in among the Latin, and he knew Tim meant to use him and the demon blood still inside him for some purpose, and that failing that, he would kill him. Sam started to shout for Dean before remembering how very far away he was. He wouldn’t be coming to his rescue this time, or ever again. There was no escaping this one. Dean had been hinting for a while now that Sam had become the kind of thing hunters hunted. Maybe it wasn’t so ironic after all that this was how he would meet his end.

There was a sharp sound and a grunt, then another. The hunters in Sam’s line of sight seemed to be thinning quickly. His left leg was freed, then the right, and there was Bucky, felling them one by one with mechanical efficiency. Tim dropped his book and cocked his gun as soon as he realized what was happening, and even by then it was already almost too late. 

Still, he fired, right at Bucky, point blank. Bucky deflected it easily with his left arm, grabbed Tim by the face, and bashed his head against the bar. Reggie was the last man standing, and he tried to run, but Bucky caught him and put him through the wall. Sam could only watch in awed horror as Bucky turned to look at him, blank, with an eerily calm expression. For the first time, it occurred to Sam that maybe Bucky wasn’t saving Sam. Maybe their little connection over the bar hadn’t meant the same things to him it had meant to Sam. Maybe Sam was next. 

As Bucky advanced toward him, Sam struggled to his knees and tried to crawl, but between the hunters’ mercilessness and his desperation to get away, he’d ended up with at least a sprain, maybe worse, and he was having a hard time getting anywhere. He felt that gloved hand come around him and haul him to his feet ... then set him rather gently on a barstool. “You okay?” said Bucky, looking unaccountably sad. 

Sam nodded, heart pounding. Bucky looked askance, weirdly more present and focused, more _at ease_ , than he’d seemed all night. “This is only the second time in decades that I’ve actually saved someone instead of ... just hurting people.” His face registered grief, seeing the bodies heaped unconscious, some maybe even dead, all around him.

“It’s okay,” Sam gasped, grabbing the hand that still gripped his shirt front to steady him--definitely metal. “It’s okay. You did good. You made the right call.”

Bucky nodded and looked down, then raised his eyes to Sam’s, and Sam was sure this time: They were the same. “It follows us,” Bucky whispered. Sam could only nod.


End file.
